The Word Works International Editions, 2019.
Translated by Catherine Jagoe and Jesse Lee Kercheval.
In lyric poems of startling directness, Laura Cesarco Eglin explores the death of her father, the beauty of her country, her Jewish ancestry, and the invisible connections between the living and what’s “beyond.” Translated collaboratively by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Catherine Jagoe, accompanied by the original Spanish, each poem retains the delicacy as well as the power of Eglin’s explorations of that which we cannot always see but must always feel. Says Aviya Kushner, “These poems excel in the art of astonishing transformation. Lipstick becomes a remembrance of the selection line of life versus death in the Holocaust. An eyelash becomes the site of all hope, glued to the chest, and brushing hair turns into a chance to learn ‘eccentricity in community.’ These beautiful translations seem to know their own irresistibility, as they capture the poet’s understanding.”